


We Are Stars Wrapped In Skin

by BringMeTheSky



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Force Bond (Star Wars), Introspection, Kylo Ren Has Issues, Kylo Ren Needs a Hug, Post-Star Wars: The Force Awakens, brief depiction of torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-31
Updated: 2020-05-31
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:34:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24473608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BringMeTheSky/pseuds/BringMeTheSky
Summary: He stands at the viewport in his quarters, gazing out into the inky black. His eyes track the stars spattered against the void before him, tracing the constellations. Somewhere out there in the galaxy, pulsars are beating out their endless thrum into the darkness, supernovas are exploding, gas clouds are twisting and forming in strange billowing shapes. Somewhere out there the hunger of black holes is eating up all around them, bending the light around their rim as entire stars and systems are stretched out, before their light is lost forever.*Kylo has brief glimpses and impressions of Rey before the force-bond fully brings them together.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 7
Kudos: 25





	We Are Stars Wrapped In Skin

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fic in the Star Wars fandom/my first Reylo fic. 
> 
> The title is a quote from Rumi; "We are stars wrapped in skin, the light you are seeking has always been within."

He stands at the viewport in his quarters, gazing out into the inky black. His eyes track the stars spattered against the void before him, tracing the constellations. Somewhere out there in the galaxy, pulsars are beating out their endless thrum into the darkness, supernovas are exploding, gas clouds are twisting and forming in strange billowing shapes. Somewhere out there the hunger of black holes is eating up all around them, bending the light around their rim as entire stars and systems are stretched out, before their light is lost forever.

Since Starkiller he feels strung out, lost, like a ghost of himself. His wound throbs insistently, a line of pain spidering its way down his cheek, tracking its way to his collarbone and then down onto his chest. A reminder. Her mark left upon him. 

He turns to the blackness within himself lets the dark tendrils creep and twist their way around his thoughts. He pulls the Dark close, feeling the way it catches and hooks into him, allowing it to hang around him like a cloak. If anyone were to enter his quarters at that moment (though none would dare), they may not see a man. Only a shadow, around which a substance like black smoke curls. 

Probing deeper, he allows himself to sink down into the harsh comfort of the Dark, so used to the way it twists cruelly, its pain both familiar and welcome.

Inside, at the core of it all, somehow surviving the blackness, a small spark of light still hangs on. It's resilient, tenacious, and the black shrinks from it, wavering at the edges. It reaches out and draws from something, someone, out there in the Galaxy, and like the flame draws oxygen it sustains itself. He watches it passively. 

He thinks of the scavenger girl, of the snow blanketing the forest, of the sputter and hiss of their blades as they had met over and over, burning purple where the beams battled against each other. Her hazel eyes had been narrowed and fierce. She was like a fury, all tightly coiled energy and fast slashing movements, nimble and sure footed. He could feel her anger, her rage as she fought, her feelings bleeding into his own and feeding his own rage. 

She was wild and savage.

She was glorious.

The spark inside him burns a little brighter, becoming an ember which eats away at the edges of the dark. 

*

Snoke had been displeased. He had sneered, his face twisting with disgust, the chasms of his ruined flesh twisting deeper. Kneeling before him, not really listening to his words, Kylo had considered the blurry reflection of his face peering up at him from the highly polished floor of the throne room. As Snoke berated him for the loss of the scavenger and for the failure at Starkiller, he had tucked away both that ember of brightness, and the thoughts of the scavenger girl, locking them deep in a hidden box within and wrapping the darkness around them to conceal it. 

Then, as expected, there had been pain. First licking at his fingertips, then scorching its way up his arms, bursting into his chest and snaking up his neck into his head, until he was burning from the inside out. Dropping to the floor, trembling and screaming, he had felt the bruises bloom across his back and chest as Snoke's power pummelled him, felt the harsh blades of Snoke's fury slashing at his skin, droplets of blood making his undershirt stick to his convulsing body.

Later, back in his quarters, as he sat applying bacta to the worst wounds, limbs still trembling in the aftermath of the pain, he had felt a warmth next to him on the bed. The vaguest impression of another body, smaller than his, and the sound of unsteady breaths that weren't his own.

*  
Sometimes he thinks he glimpses her from the corner of his eye. Sometimes as he stands at the head of a sparse conference table of quarrelling officers, her figure ghosts in behind one of the chairs, and he blinks behind the dark of his mask. Sometimes he walks the sleek corridors of the ship, sees a sliver of white fabric slip around the corner ahead of him, but when he reaches the next corridor there's nobody there.

He finds himself expecting her, looking for her, raking his eyes over every space he enters to see if he can glimpse even the briefest and most intangible sense of her. 

The ocean assails him every so often. One evening as he sits in his quarters picking at his food, the distinct scent of the beach is there washing over him, a whisper of the sound of waves, a feeling of frustration and unhappiness that isn't his own. 

Sometimes there are just feelings. A mish-mash of impressions seeping into him and blending with his own, colours of emotion spreading across his mind until he can't put a name to which are hers and which are his. Since Starkiller it's as if the cold there has seeped into his bones and never left, and so he clings to those impression of feelings, lets them warm him from the inside. He reaches out and touches the thread between them, delicate as tightly spun silk. It wraps itself about him a little, tangling into the streams of darkness flowing inside him, and he lets it. 

*

He stands by the viewport in his quarters, as he does every evening he is on the ship, trying to lose himself in the incomprehensible distances between the stars that stretch out ahead of him. 

Suddenly his skin prickles and the whisper of a presence is there at his side. He momentarily hears the patter of rain, and as her emotions slide into his mind he feels her intense joy as she allows the water to cover her. From the corner of his eye, water is tracking rivulets over her sun browned face, and he can feel her still lingering sense of amazement that water just falls from the sky so freely and so often. His heart squeezes a little.

He turns to look at her, wishing, hoping that she will stay, but his motion breaks the moment, and she is suddenly gone. She leaves behind nothing but the scent of fresh rain in the sterile air of the ship, and a room that is all too empty.

He sighs and looks back out into the blackness again, his eyes tracing the stars one by one by one.


End file.
